


to each alike, of pain and care

by grahamcracker



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Historical AU, Jack-o'-lanterns, M/M, Spooky Hannibal Fic Exchange, Wendigo Hannibal Lecter, Will-o-wisp
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-06
Updated: 2018-11-06
Packaged: 2019-08-19 21:12:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16542347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grahamcracker/pseuds/grahamcracker
Summary: Will Graham doesn't know for how long he has been dead.





	to each alike, of pain and care

_[…]_

  
_Life with you was lovely - and when I say lovely, I mean doves and lilies, and velvet,_

_and that soft pink ‘v’ in the middle and the way your tongue curved up to the long, lingering ‘l’._

_Our life together was alliterative, and when I think of all the little things which will die,_

_now that we cannot share them,_

_I feel as if we were dead too._

  
_[…]_

_the Real Life of Sebastian Knight (1941) Vladimir Nabokov_

 

  
The body of Franklyn Froideveaux isn’t discovered until three days after his death. The corpse is found frozen, lying in the middle of the moorland near the woods. At first glance the cause of death seems like a mystery; Mr Froideveaux looks like any other corpse, slack-jawed, pale, and bloated hands that stick out of filthy cuffs as if though they had been dragged through the wet soil. But once doctors remove the top two layers of Mr Froideveaux three-piece suit they see the uneven stain of red bound to the fibre in the man’s undershirt; nearly black where the edges have dried. The wound underneath is a single, neat line across his stomach, starting below the navel and running up to the bruised collar bones, stopping just beneath. The cut is too clean to be the result of an accident or predator.

 

_____________________________

 

 

“You won’t have visitors for a while,” Jack Crawford says.  
  
They’re standing by the forest’s border, the one that faces a clear outline of an urbanised London on the horizon. Jack is half out in the sun, the wrinkles on his face and grey hair all that more prominent.  
  
“I know,” Will starts with that, “I told him not to walk off the path, but he ignored my advice – claimed he could cure the monster in the woods and make him rosy-cheeked and human again.”  
  
There’s no need to tell Jack how that had ended. The finality had been presented, Mr Froideveaux hollowed- and stretched out, bleeding black into the morning grass. The resolution had been the village shaken and nearly rioting due to yet another corpse found with its pockets full of forest mud and organs devoured.  
  
Will looks at Jack without turning his head before he admits it,  
  
“I don’t believe Hannibal has ever been human.”

 

_____________________________

 

Jack Crawford saw Will Graham for the first time when Bella died and his grief was fresh. When thoughts of her cold hands, the outline of her face against a newly ironed handkerchief and her sunken eyes arose every time he closed his eyes; stuck in crude detail to the inside of his eyelids.  
  
After the funeral, that had been held in August, he dragged himself out the moorland by the forest. The clouds grouped like blisters on the sky, taking shape of every horrible thing Jack convinced himself he had never done. As he pushed through heathers, nearly pulling them up by the roots, a small light appeared before him. It lit up the bare ground beneath it and licked long stripes towards the stars.  
  
Jack had heard a few myths about the fool’s fire burning by the woods. The lights were the manifestation of dead souls abandoned, too indulgent for heaven and too wicked for hell, forever left to glow between trees and never to reach the other side. He was too full of emotion to think anything of it, anger writhing like a venomous snake around his heart and so he reached out. There was no warmth as there usually would be with a source of light, he felt nothing but cold air on his skin as his fingers edged closer to the flames -just before he grazed the little ball of blue light it disappeared.  
  
The second time Jack met Will Graham it was daytime. Will appeared before him as a human, -- two eyes, a red mouth with teeth and only five fingers. The sun had reached its highest and when Jack wiped sweat from his brow with his bare hand, he saw something rise in animation. The sight of two feet in the mud caught him off guard. As his eyes trailed up the legs and over a scarred stomach he realised that whoever this was they were not alive - so impossibly pale in the ardent sunlight that its veins appeared black and too big beneath the bruised skin. A man stood him company, yellow strands of wheat bent and scraped against an ugly scar that twisted its way up between his ribs in nothing but cruelty. He had only one arm and the stump where the other one was missing seemed spoiled by caked blood. The man, some form of Will it later turned out to be, had not said anything, did not suggest movement, merely looked at Jack through heavy eyelashes. Jack blinked, just a millisecond at best, but it was enough time for the dead man to depart  
  
It’s simply a hallucination from too much sun exposure, he had managed to persuade himself as he went to sleep that night.  
  
When he died he had expected to be rejoined with Bella. He would never tell anyone this, but he had actually looked forward to death; not enough to actively seek it out as he knew Bella would view him with sorrow, near disappointment from heaven. Heaven. When he said Bella was in heaven he was sure of it, with every grey hair on his head and with every shallower breath that he drew.  
  
The reality of things seldom lives up to its set expectations. When Jack died he was not reunited with Bella. Instead, he had woken up not feeling his limbs. He had only been able to see what was above him, tall trees and leaves clouding the sky. A man peered down at him and after sixteen years of staring at that pale face with a bit of a beard shadow and tired eyes, he would recognise it even blind.  
  
“You,” he said and his lips cracked around the single word.  
  
When his head did not feel as heavy the man, Will, informed Jack that they were both stuck in limbo, not ensured a place in heaven or hell but not living either. Neither could leave the forest, though Will could not tell why.  
  
“The forest is like the opposite of Dante’s purgatory,” Will explained instead, with a smile edging on the corner of his lips as if what he was about to say was humorous, “instead of not being good enough for heaven nor bad enough for hell, we’re too bad for both.”  
  
Jack had felt the raw grief of when Bella died hit him again, opened up like a coagulated wound. There had been something distressed clawing inside his ribcage at the thought that not even in death would he be able to see her again. He felt Will regard him, felt Will somewhat understand this something threatening to implode his chest.  
  
“Once. You can see her once more," there was no pity in Will's voice.  
  
Jack didn't remember how they appeared there, but he and Will found themselves sitting in a white room, peeking through long straps of fabric that resembled heavy curtains. Everything had been layered with a soft sheen and Will had explained that the feeling welling in Jack's chest was all heaven. It was there Jack saw her for the last time, engulfed in warm light and looking the same as when she had been lowered into the wet ground.  
  
Useless veins, wrinkly skin and the crushing pain of love lost. A tidal wave of nostalgia swept through him with the pull of the moon as he caught faint glimpses of Bella’s tan ankles sticking out beneath the pastel mantle draped around her. She didn’t suffer anymore and her laughter was like bells on a string.  
  
Jack had watched on and wept for the first time since her death.

 

_____________________________

 

  
They’ve built a clock, and Will believes he can hear the turn of gears and rhythmic beat of time. Watching London expand; new, better, more magnificent houses crowding the horizon and the black smoke rising from factories made him feel old. Made him feel as if he had lived longer than he had, though it was hard to tell as he did not remember when he had died the first time. He guessed it was around the same period as the second time.  
  
He thinks of Froideveaux, the desperately lonely little man who's now dead because of his desperate and lonely nature. Wonders how lucky Mr Froideveaux got in the end, did he burn his toes in hellfire or did he get blessed with a mantel in pastel colour over his shoulder. It's hard to tell, he might've been an annoying and certainly unique little man, he was not unkind at heart. Will could not remember if he had been unkind or not when he lived, he could barely remember life at all. It all came to him in small bursts of brief light, sometimes very intense but sometimes not even enough to make him stir in his sleep. He dreams mostly of Molly; however, she's starting to fade. Her slim hands twist in his as he holds them in his sleep, turns long and rough against his skin, her face grows masculine and antlers and flower sprouts crown her greying hair. Will does not recognise her as Molly anymore, but instead a creature too human for comfort, who's lips curve just so and who's eyes narrow like a predator following the movement of prey. The man's hands do not stay in Will's for long, traces Will's bare arms with the weight of a spider-leg, then draws him closer by the neck. The man whispers something against Will's parted lips, sweet and assuring.  
  
Hannibal is the God of the forest. He’s the god of everything that grows within it. He’s the god of life, from the baby birds still fed by their mothers to the lines of sunshine which filters through tree branches in summer. Hannibal is the god of death and plague.

**Author's Note:**

> IM SO SORRY THIS IS UP SO LATE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!I'll give u the exact cordinates in case u want to come kill me. I hope u liked it though, it's not finished and I'll be posting more hopefully soon. School is really killing me rn and I'm in the middle of switching majors so yeah :.-)


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